I have become a routine law-breaker.
Today, for example, I passed three cars – even though it was a “double yellow” zone.
I almost always drive 10-20 mph faster than the posted speed limit.
There is a red light at an intersection that often only cycles green for a left turn once every other cycle. If no one’s coming, I run the light.
I never wear my seatbelt – on principle.
I use a radar detector, even though they’re hugely illegal in my state.
Am I a bad driver? Or are the laws I break stupid and worth ignoring when you can get away with it?
First, a “point of order.” The last time I wrecked a car was in 1987. No one else was involved. I ran off the road and hit a tree. I was 21 years old.
I’m 44 now and haven’t scuffed anything since then.
Ok.
So either I’m really lucky or I must be at least a reasonably good driver. Right? The car companies trust me with brand-new vehicles, many of them high dollar, some exotic – Jaguars, Porsches, the works. My car insurance is low. I have “plus” points on my license. My last traffic ticket was about three years ago.
So now let’s look at my crimes – and then you tell me:
* Passing on the double yellow –
I do this almost every day because, for one, there are almost no legal passing zones left anymore. They’ve painted ‘em over. Even straight stretches with excellent visibility. They’re double yellow, too. So, the choice is, obey the letter of the law – even when you roll up behind a past-it old febe hurtling along at the breakneck speed of 42 mph in a 55 zone (slowing for the curves). Or you ignore the damn law and when you’ve got a clear shot, you pass the old fart.
I am endlessly amazed at how supine – how passive and helpless and indecisive and fearful – most people are. No matter how slow the car in the lead is, most of the cattle out there won’t pass if it’s a double yellow. ‘Cause that would be illegal.
I say to Hell with that. If the way’s clear and there’s no cop in sight, I will pass the slow poke every time – and feel good doing it. Am I wrong? Sociopathic?
Or just not properly conditioned?
* “Speeding” –
I do it all the time. So do you, probably. Everyone does, just about. What does this fact tell us? Is the law stupid? Or are those who obey it stupid? And what about the people who enforce it, if the latter?
Yet we all – or rather, most of us – pretend the speed limit is divine writ. When pulled over by a cop we never say, “Officer, I was traveling at a reasonable and safe speed, along with the flow of traffic. The posted limit is set absurdly low and everyone ignores it, including you. You know it and I know it and everyone else knows it, too – so how about letting me go about my business?” Instead, it’s “Oh, I’m so sorry officer. I didn’t realize how fast I was going. I’m very sorry and promise never to do it again.”
Make you want to puke, too?
* “Running” red lights -
Have you ever found yourself sitting at a red light when there’s clearly no traffic around? Or waiting on a green arrow to go left or right, even though you can see there’s no oncoming traffic – and so, no reason (other than it being illegal) to make your turn?
Well, I do something Americans seem increasingly unable to do. Two things, actually. First, I exercise my own good judgment. If I can see there are no cars coming (and if there are no cops around) I will make a right on red (or left on red), the law be damned. Second, I just refuse to be bound by least-common-denominator edicts that are based on the idea we’re all complete idiots and inept drivers incapable of determining for ourselves when it’s safe to turn without a little green light to show us the way .
* Seatbelts –
The only person who has any business telling anyone else to buckle up is the owner of the car, the parent of a child – or one’s spouse. It’s the owner’s car, so he set the rules; if it’s your parent or your spouse, they have the moral right to nag about things that are good for you. But the government? It has no more right to demand you buckle up than it does insisting that you eat your veggies or stop smoking or go to the gym and lose that 15 pounds around your middle. Government has one morally legitimate function and that is to keep each of us from harming each other – either physically or via fraud. Period. Reforming our souls or making us “good” or “safe” or “healthy” – well, that’s none of their god-damned business.
This is why I don’t buckle up and never will buckle up – just to spite the bastards. Unless I’m in someone else’s car or my wife makes me do it.
* Radar detector –
The government plays dirty, so why shouldn’t I? It deliberately creates radar traps by posting too-low speed limits it knows people will ignore, then hides cops in bushes with radar guns, expecting us to play along. And pay up.
To Hell with that, too.
Just as I would ignore a law that deprived me of the right to possess a handgun for my own defense and the defense of my home/family, so also will I continue to ignore laws that would deny me at least an even shake when it comes to evading the depredations of county and state “law enforcement” – whose real job is revenue collection.
And for all you pedantic “it’s the law!” sticklers out there, riddle me this: How come it’s ok for my state to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling that state laws forbidding the possession and use of radar detectors are unconstitutional – but it’s not ok for me to ignore my state’s refusal to abide by the Supreme Court’s ruling?
Isn’t it “the law”? Well?
So, now you know my evildoer ways. Am I in the wrong? Or am I fighting the good fight, doing what any American of an earlier time would have done as a matter of course?
An increasing number of personal choices are becoming illegal. There is so much legislation out there that probably almost everyone breaks the law each day. I imagine many of the people going the posted speed limit and refusing to pass slower motorists are probably trying to avoid the police because of their own personal choices that are illegal like drug posession or having a gun, or just because the fine for those simple violations is usually over $100.
I expect the “safety” regulations to be ratcheted up. I predict that it will be mandatory to wear helmets in an automobile within 50 years. Since head injuries are so expensive to treat, and with the government soon to be carrying everyone’s health insurance, the rationale will be that to keep medical care costs down everyone has to be protected. First it will just be kids but then everybody.
Also high risk activities, like riding a motorcycle will be made illegal. This will happen as soon as the people who came of age in the 1960′s-70′s pass on. Most kids today are terrified of motorcycles having been raised by helicopter mothers that hover about making sure precious doesn’t get hurt. To them riding a motorcycle is like playing Russion roulette, and with all of the morons, illegals, and ancients on the road, it almost is!
There’s a great book about just that; I think it’s called “Three Felonies a Day.”
It’s an ingenious system because it gives police a pretext to pull over/harass/search almost anyone, anytime. In the old America – you know, back in the 1980s and before – cops had to work harder to pester you. There were no dragnet “sobriety checkpoints” and you pretty much had to be doing something noticeably illegal before the cop could pull you over. That’s all been thrown out the window.
It began to get bad under Clintigula, but it hit warp speed under The Chimp – and I will never forgive the Republicans and “conservatives” who supported that despicable little cretin for it.
“roll up behind a past-it old febe”
I’m 59 and I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m on my Z1000 or supercharged S-10 crawling behind some with-it snot nose twitting or farcebooking behind the wheel.
Well, obviously I didn’t mean you! (Plenty of young febes out there, too.)
Nice bike, by the way. I almost bought one of those. I still have a ZRX1200 and a hopped-up ’76 Kz900 (1015 now).
Glad to find another Kaw fan out there -
It is nice that you break all those laws and are still alive. Your chances of hurting yourself or others are far higher breaking your laws but that is your choice. You say it is fine to not have insurance but you said yourself that you totalled a car and only hit a tree. What would have happened if you hit a car with a family instead? The problem with people like you that break all laws then you have a society like the drivers in India where there is a death in every 3 to 4 seconds on the roadway and they pass on blind curves all the time and run red lights. They also die in a far higher percentage. You should have been watching the world deadliest roads that was on the history channel. The drivers drive just like you do.
You said you are against seat belt laws but the fact is those laws have saved thousands of lives. People always say it is not going to be me in a serious accident so I do not need to wear a seatbelt. If you get killed in an accident because you did not wear your seatbelt what would your family say? Would they say it is ok that he died because he was exercising his rights to the end of his short life? I do not know if you have kids or not but do you let them do whatever they like no matter if it is dangerous because they have their rights? There are thousands of families out there that would have liked it that if their dead family member had been wearing a seatbelt. Rember, accidents do not always happen to the other guy no matter how well you think you can drive.
Do you think it ought to be a ticketable offense to fail to exercise? To not eat right? Those things increase your risk of disease and death (and by the way, much more directly than not wearing a seatbelt). The point isn’t whether seat belts “save lives.” It’s whether the government should be involved in dictating to you about personal choices that don’t directly threaten anyone else. I don’t wear my seat belt – but I do hit the gym and work out like a fiend every day and run several miles multiple times a week – all of which is very good for me. Should I be able to force you to do the same? Should it be illegal to be a few pounds heavy? To smoke? To eat bacon?
It’s “unsafe” and “not good for you,” after all…
It comes down to the kind of society we want – one in which you, as an individual, are free to live your life as you see fit (until you do something that actually threatens to harm another person). Or one in which others may force you to do as they see fit, according to their perception of what’s sensible.